Key players in health sector

Suprotip Ghosh gives the list of the key players in the pharmaceutical sector in India.

Apollo Hospitals, founded by US-trained surgeon Dr Prathap C Reddy, is the leading player in corporate healthcare and has a chain of over 40 hospitals that engage over 5,000 doctors and nurses on its rolls or as consultants. The listed company posted a turnover of more than Rs 891 crore last year, and pioneered the commercialisation and medical tourism in the country. Its leading specialisation is in cardiac care.

Ranbaxy, founded in 1961 by Dr Bhai Mohan Singh, grandfather of current CEO Malvinder Mohan Singh, is India’s largest company for generic, or off-patent, drugs. The company, with annual sales of nearly Rs 4,000 crore, is present in 49 countries and sells its products in over 100 countries.

The Rs 3,700-crore Cipla was founded in 1935 by Khwaja Abdul Hamied, father of current chairman Yusuf Khwaja Hamied. It is India’s second largest pharma company in terms of market capitalisation, and has taken on the largest and most powerful companies in the world in making the cheapest AIDS medicines for millions of patients.

Dr Reddy’s Laboratories boasts of making the largest acquisition by an Indian pharmaceutical company abroad — taking over Betapharm of Germany. Founded in 1984 by Anji Reddy in Hyderabad, Dr Reddy’s, with sales in excess of Rs 3,800 crore, is credited widely to have licensed the first original drug ever made by an Indian company, though it was never sold commercially.

FortisHealthcare, led by Ranbaxy’s Shivinder Mohan Singh, opened its first hospital in Mohali in 2001. Since then, Fortis has expanded its operations by opening multi-specialty hospitals, a boutique-style hospital and various satellite and heart command centres in Delhi and elsewhere.